Dispersit
by applesandicedtea
Summary: Stars cannot shine without darkness. A series of drabbles.
1. Marked

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.

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Sakura knew Sasuke was her soulmate when he handed her a tooth-marked, blunt number two pencil. It was their third year at the academy, and she had the good fortune of being placed next to him in their seating assignment. As always at the start of class, she lined up her school supplies precisely. Pencils on the right, eraser on the left, and notebook in the center. That day however, she accidently knocked one of her pencils to the floor. It rumbled across the wood until colliding with the side of Sasuke's foot, and to her disbelief he reached down and picked it up for her.

"Here," he muttered so quietly she almost didn't catch the word.

Sakura's stomach seized and her palms gravitated toward her left collar bone, clutching together at the center of her chest. Her soulmark was simple compared to others she had seen, just one word written in neat capital letters red as blood right above her heart. 'Here'. The first word her soulmate would ever speak to her. The same word that had just fallen from Sasuke's lips. While she'd always openly admired Sasuke from afar, she had never dared speak to him before in fear of his reclusive nature. Girls prettier than her had been ignored. And now, with one softly spoken word, she believed their fates intertwined.

Sasuke furrowed his brow and gently placed the pencil on her desk, evidently deciding she was just another stupid girl fawning over him. Then she spoke.

"Thank-you."

His back straightened a little and his onyx eyes quickly slid back to meet her wide emerald ones. They remained that way for a heartbeat, one hard thump in Sakura's chest, suspended in time. Then Iruke-sensei rapped the board with his knuckle and the moment was broken. He turned his eyes from her and slid into his classic brooding pose.

Years later, after she had grown-up a little bit more and he had continued to grow so far out of her reach, a small hate for her soulmark sprouted. She felt her mark burn like a brand at all the moments he was close to death on their missions and during the Chunin exams. She would never forget how it seared after he received the curse-mark, how that pain made her cry out in the night over her fallen boys into the misty gloom of the forest. While she was too weak to fight, forever stuck on the sidelines as a bystander while her most important people risked everything, the mark would blaze and her heart would freeze over as if death itself gasped it in his palm. When they were first assigned to the same team she rejoiced, but now she cursed herself for being too weak to protect him and her mark for reminding her of her failures.

Then, on one night when the moon hung swollen in the sky, she felt her mark burn faintly. Sasuke was in pain. Sakura stopped and listened to the crickets chirp lightly, and at that moment the wind picked up softly and tossed jade leaves in the dusty moonlight.

By the time it died she was long gone.

"If you go I'll scream and-!" He disappeared and reappeared behind her, she felt his breath against her hair. The pain in her mark was gone.

"Thank-you." She had one moment to feel the bitter sting of irony. Then the world was darkness.

Naruto and his team leave her at the gates to go get him back. And she stays there. Until the sun has long set and the stars are just beginning to peak out behind the black curtain sky. Eventually her mother finds her and takes her home. Sakura grips her hand loosely and stares at the soulmark decorating Mebuki's forearm. Her father's sloppy handwriting runs across her skin in a shade of pale green, spelling out one of his famous jokes that did less than amuse her mother at the time they met. When they arrive home Kizashi shouts his greeting and waves his arm enthusiastically from the kitchen, and Sakura spies the blue soulmark matching her mother's on his arm. She looks at them together, like a well-oiled machine, Mebuki immediately taking his place in cutting something for dinner. She knows this is not the fate of her and Sasuke, who is so lost in his pain she wonders if he's ever thought of the house he'd like to live in someday or any part of his future at all outside of revenge. Sakura gives her parents a smile and goes to her room just before the tears come, sliding down her face silently like rain rolls down a window.

The next morning Sakura's mark is a slowly smoldering bonfire that builds and builds as if someone is throwing gasoline on her. She wriggles in her sheets and somehow knows that Naruto has found him, and they are fighting. She throws on whatever clothes she can find and goes to the hospital to wait for her boys to come back, because Naruto never goes back on his word. When he returns inches from death, she doesn't need a mark to feel the terrible hurt. He's wheeled away from her into the depths of the hospital, followed by so many others of her class and she can do nothing but wait. Shikamaru waits with her for a while, both silent in their grief and guilt.

In the years after Sakura scrubs at her mark in the shower, hoping it washes away in the swirl of soap, water, and blood going down the drain. But it remains proud and red and _here_ against her pale skin, taunting her. Sasuke is not here, and she doubts he will ever be here again.

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A/N: I felt this chapter needed a little more fleshing out, so I updated a bit. I hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading.


	2. The Fox and the Mage

A/N: Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, or any of its characters

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She can tell he's new right away. Not from Windhelm, certainly not from Skyrim. The cold wears him, she can see it under his skin and behind his sapphire eyes. The inn creaks with the frozen air that sweeps in behind the man's entrance, and abruptly stills when he finally shuts the massive door. She watches him stumble between tables to the bar, stiff like wood. Then a smile when he greets Elda, the innkeeper, bringing life to the puppet. She can almost bask in its warmth, finds herself leaning towards him like the leaves in spring. The helmet comes off, and out pops a head of gold coins twinkling in the candlelight. His colorings are an elaborate Nord camouflage, but any native worth their stuff can see underneath the underneath. No, definitely not from Skyrim. Somewhere warm based on his tan skin. Somewhere far, far away.

Sakura returns her gaze to her drink, feeling oddly bonded to the stranger. Her own rose hair marks her too, there is no trust of outsiders in Windhelm. The Nords are nervous, at times superstitious. War is calling on the wind and they are wolves caught on the scent, the drums in their veins beginning to beat. She wishes she was born with the bloodlust that consumes the natives here, but she's always been a student. Books and spells are her guide. A week ago she decided to flee to High Rock, before the Nord superstition turned into an all-out witch hunt. She looked enough like an elf, being Breton, and used magic to boot. She wasn't going to take the risk.

The chair in front of her shot out from under the table, screeching against the floor. She nearly gags on her mead at the intrusion, emerald eyes shooting up to meet depthless, ocean blue.

"Hey, I'm Naruto." He sticks his hand out across the table, bumping into her empty food bowl. She limply grasps it, too in shock to object or attempt to quiet the boisterous man.

"Sakura."

"I can tell you can help me, Sakura," he continues, letting her hand go and grasping his chin. He furrows his brow like he's reading particularly tough literature and scrutinizes her.

"Help you?" she repeats dumbly, mead forgotten in her hand and lip beginning to curl.

"I have a way of sensing these things." He nods sharply, kicking his feet up on the table and leaning back on his chair.

She is flabbergasted, astounded at the creature that has suddenly waltzed into her life. When it becomes apparent that he has no intention of explaining himself, or what he even needs help with, Sakura feels the telltale tick in her brow begin to twitch. She places her drink between them with a crack and leans forward on her elbows.

"Is there anything at all you'd like to add?" she gives a smile, appealing as the permanent grin fixed on skulls. "Or are you just going to continue spewing nonsense?"

"Oh! Yeah I guess you're right…where to start," He pauses and exhales sharply, "I need help with just a couple things. The first is getting my bastard friend back from a bunch of murderers," His eyes sharpen at that, glinting like those of an animal, "Then I need to find the Greybeards…and who knows after that. I'm sort of picking things up as I go."

"You don't just _find_ the Greybeards," Sakura scoffs, "They live on top of the Throat of the World, no one has heard from them in years. Why would you need to see them anyway?"

"Because they asked me to come."

Sakura stares vacantly at him, then rubs a hand across her forehead soothingly. "You're telling me a Greybeard came down from the mountain, and asked you to come see them?"

Naruto finally looks abashed at this, he shifts his gaze from her to the hearth.

"Not exactly. They sort of spoke to me, shouted more like it, from the sky." She sees him swallow slightly.

"From the sky?" Her brows furrow. Now that she thinks about it, she'd begun to hear rumors of some event in Whiterun. About the return of a being straight from the oldest myths in the realm. Sakura feels the pieces falling to place in her head, the puzzle of Naruto being to form a picture. The man sitting before her couldn't possibly be...

"I heard them." Naruto fixes her with a look so intense she almost blushes. "The world is in danger, Sakura, a danger that hasn't been seen in hundreds of years. Somehow I'm tied into it, somehow I'm supposed to help, but I can't do it alone. They told me so, they want me to see them."

"Why do you need me?" She breathes softly, "You don't even know me."

"Like I said, I have a way of telling things about people. And you're the one I want." His electric grin is back. Infectious, she thinks, dangerous. A fox who has caught his dinner.

She agrees before she can stop herself, cursing her sympathetic nature. If the kid turned out to be a crackpot, at least she had the chance to earn some more money before her journey. If he was right…then she may have just fallen into a legend.

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"Dawnstar?" Sakura questions. Her boots crunch in the freshly fallen snow, and from what she can tell of the looming clouds there is more to come. Most of Windhelm is still sound asleep, the only sound the snow tumbling over itself in the wind. "That's the opposite direction of Whiterun."

"Like I told you back at the inn, I need to find my friend. That's the whole reason I came to Skyrim in the first place." He grips the strap of his bag and tightens it over his shoulder.

"But why there?"

He glances back at her, peering through his messy frock of hair with an almost clinical gaze.

"Sasuke has gotten in with some bad people. They made him some promises that he thinks he needs," his voice sounds hoarse, regret hangs heavily on each word. "He had a rough past and is blaming all the wrong people. But I'm going to save him from himself."

Sakura takes this in quietly. Unsure whether to press him about this Sasuke character. She thinks about all the things Naruto has promised to save in the short time she's known him, as if they are just things to check off a supply list. His friend. The rest of the world. "Still doesn't answer my question, why is he in Dawnstar?"

"If the rumors are true," He chances a quick glance at her again, "Then that's where the new Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary is."

Sakura's blood freezes in her veins, and she snaps her head to meet him eye-to-eye. "I thought their lair burned to the ground…they said they found bodies."

"It did and there were bodies, but not all of them perished in the fire. A few weeks ago some shady people started showing up in Dawnstar, apparently passing through and heading along the shore. One of them sounded a lot like Sasuke."

"And how do you propose we take on the entirety of the remaining Brotherhood? Just waltz into their home? How do you know your friend is willing to be saved?" Naruto's plan is full of holes, and she is not going down on the sinking ship.

"We're not going to Dawnstar just yet, I have another idea. We're going to take them out from the inside, and then deal with Sasuke."

"The inside?" They stop in front of a forlorn house, windows utterly dark.

"I hear there's a kid named Aventus Aretino in Windhelm who has performed the Black Sacrament, and we're going to answer it. If that doesn't get the Brotherhood's attention I don't know what will."

"You think they'll be appreciative of that? What if Sasuke recognizes you?" Her brows draw together as her minds whirls through the potential faults in his plan. Too many.

"That's where you come in. You'll have to go under cover, and eventually get me inside." Naruto grins at his genius.

Sakura's mouth pulls down into a frown, she blinks in frustration as snowflakes cling to her eyelashes. "And why won't they kill me for taking their contract? You're willing to bet my life on potentially pissing a murdering cult off."

"The Brotherhood is dying. They're desperate for new members," Naruto raises his hand gives three booming knocks to the door, "Besides, if you're ever in any danger I'll be around to save you."

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A/N: Hope you enjoyed! Crossovers are fun.


	3. Blood Moon

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.

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Supposedly they're dangerous. It's what Sakura's been taught since before she could really understand. Looking at one now, behind the bars that gleam with soft UV light serving as the only barrier between them, dangerous is not on the list that comes to mind. His ebony hair is an unkempt mop on his head, falling into his equally dark eyes that watch her like a caged rat. His alabaster skin is taunt around the bones of his face, gleaming like a skull in the darkness.

"Sasuke Uchiha," she tests the name on her tongue, "that's what they say your name is."

He doesn't move a muscle, just the flutter of eyelashes indicate he heard her at all.

"I've never seen a Vamp before," she clarifies although he doesn't ask, "I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. I have to say you're a bit disappointing."

"Let me out. We'll see how much I disappoint you then." His words are all sharp edges, gruff as if they are being ripped from his throat.

She smiles brightly at him, kneeling down closer to the bars. The light burns her eyes slightly, not as much as they would burn him if he were to come out of the shadow. "Arrogant. Even now. I like that."

He bares his teeth at her and she feels her own canines begin to protrude from her gums in instinctive response. They face off for a beat, perfectly still. Two predators eyeing one another. She smells sour fear on him, beneath sharp adrenaline. For a moment she feels a bud of sympathy like a rock in her chest, looking at the decrepit form before her, but she smothers the feeling before it blooms. Still, Sakura doesn't like to think of herself as cruel, and she backs up to give him the comfort of space again.

"I'm sorry for the conditions you've been kept in. I think you understand though, we have to be careful." Her tone is kept carefully hollow. She begins to leave, curiosity sated.

"Wait…Wolf," he calls out.

She looks over her shoulder at him, hand gripping the door handle, surprised.

"What is your name?"

She pauses at this, tempted to leave his question unanswered. After all he is their prisoner and ultimately a Lycan killer. Not a play thing. But he intrigues her, and her name alone offers no harm.

"Sakura," her voice rings out into the dark, and she closes the door behind her with a snap.

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She visits again a week later. As she enters the room she hears the shift of his body against the stone floor. His eyes flash at her in the dark, two perfect circles of light.

"Why are you here?" his voice sounds weaker than before and she wonders when he was last fed.

"I don't know," she answers honestly. "I thought you could use company."

He doesn't answer her, staying almost unnaturally still. She watches him for a while, tracing his features and trying to see the monster underneath. He really doesn't look different from anyone she's seen before, maybe more pale. He moves again and she catches a whiff of his scent, skin prickling involuntarily and nose wrinkling. How could she have missed it before?

"Are you just going to stare?" he croaks, eyebrow cocked.

Sakura looks away, fighting the heat creeping up her neck. "You smell weird," she hisses back.

This takes him by surprise apparently, as she swears she hears an amused huff escape his mouth.

"You don't smell quite like a rose either, dog."

They return to their stare down, silence heavily blanketing the air between them.

" _Why_ are you here?" he asks again.

"You're the enemy, I just wanted to understand what I'm supposed to be fighting." The answer surprises even her a little. The Clan taught her to hate vampires. That they were evil and must be annihilated. For hundreds of years there's been never-ending war, history so tangled and muddy she wonders if anyone even knows how it began. Sakura is relatively young for her kind, still in training, and only knows the safety and propaganda of her home. Nothing of the real world outside. When she heard rumors of a new, young prisoner, she couldn't help herself.

"How old are you?" Sakura asks, leaning back against the wall behind her.

"…Fifty."

She smiles softly at him, "I'm a year older than you."

"And you've never seen a vampire?"

"The Clan is…protective of their young."

A bell rings from the hallway outside, and Sakura is immediately on her feet. It's time to go back. She spares Sasuke another glance and bites her lip. Unsure of how to depart.

"Have you ever thought," Sasuke moves closer to the bars, "that vampires are the ones that need to be protected from you?"

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A/N: Hope you enjoyed! It's a bit short, but I'll continue later.


	4. I'm Here with You

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Skyrim.

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"Do you think he misses us too?" Sakura's gaze is flat like the surface of a lake. Evergreen eyes reflecting the dance of the fire before her, shadows snapping across her brow to an unheard rhythm.

Naruto swallows and looks away from her forlorn features, rubbing his hands together lightly.

"I'm sure he does, Sakura. He has to." He tries to give her a small smile, but the muscles in his cheeks can only spasm in the cold. Outside the snow storm rages, wind howling and snow falling so thick the entrance of their cave appears to open into a void. As if the Nine themselves scooped their shelter from the ground in their palms and left them in another realm.

"Then why haven't we heard from him in so long? Why hasn't he sent any message? A smoke signal? Even a whisper to the woods? I'm sure I would hear it." She abruptly twists to face him. "Can I tell you something?"

Naruto bobs his head, leaning towards her inch by inch.

She bends forward, hand coming to her mouth as if there is anyone to hear them.

"Sometimes I swear I can feel him. Somewhere out there. Like something inside me knows that he is still around. Still so close to us." Sakura's eyes have started to smolder.

Naruto takes in a breath through his teeth, clenching his jaw lightly. She frowns at him, hurt flashing quickly across her face. Then something else entirely.

"I think…I think I need to lay down," she mumbles, almost trance-like.

Naruto watches her crawl towards her bed roll, blue eyes weary and waiting.

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"She's _gone_?" Sasuke hisses. He fists the front of his friend's cloak, leather gloves creaking under the sudden motion.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke." Naruto places his hand gently over Sasuke's, knowing any sudden movement would trigger him into a fight.

"Why didn't you try to stop her? Why did you let her go?" Sasuke's eyes blaze, nostrils flared in anger.

"I did try. I did everything I could." Naruto's voice is weak, barely offering protest to Sasuke's accusations.

"We only just reunited, why would she _leave_?" Sasuke releases Naruto's cloak and turns away. Charcoal Eyes searching the room as if it could provide the answers he sought. Naruto watches silently, unable to begin comforting his friend. Then Sasuke stiffens.

"Her bag. What is her bag doing here if she means to leave us behind?" He grabs at the satchel left on the ground, accidentally dumping part of its contents on the floor.

Naruto curses under his breath as a jar filled with what appears to be mud softly collides with his boot. He was sloppy this time.

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Sakura laughs, a sound he hasn't heard in a long time. Naruto turns to watch her wade through the babbling river that trails with them through the woods. She splashes a wave of water in his direction, spray shining like gems in the sun.

"I forgot how much I love the warmth," she admits, tracing unseen patterns onto the water's surface with the tip of a finger.

Naruto offers her an ear to ear smile, and begins to take his own boots off to join her. "I missed it too."

"My brother was always a better swimmer," she mumbles, "Once we went to the ocean and he dove so deep I thought he'd drowned. Then _boom_ ," Sakura smacks the water and sends a column into the air, "Itachi comes up with a slaughterfish practically the size of me!"

Naruto freezes, an icy hand reaching into his stomach and driving out the warmth just beginning to blossom. "What did you say?"

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A/N: Drop a review if you'd like :)


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